Demon Possessed by Stacia Kane Page B

painting. “Sometimes it isn’t too bad, though.”
     
    “No, sometimes it certainly isn’t.”
     
    She didn’t know how long they sat like that. Not long, she didn’t think. Not in such a public place, in such a small group where everyone at the table could watch and probably were. But it was long enough to remind her exactly why she was still there, why she still wanted to be there. Long enough to know he wanted her there too.
     
    “I was thinking,” he said finally, giving her thigh another squeeze and taking a sip of wine with his other hand. The sound of the room rushed back, the others talking, the faint tinkle of silverware on plates. More servants moved in with larger trays, delivering what looked like pheasant. “We haven’t been back to Italy. Want to go, week after next?”
     
    “For your birthday? Oh . . . shit, I can’t. I can’t take more time off so soon, and the rest of my vacation time at the station is booked for Christmas. I’m sorry.”
     
    He shrugged. “No problem.”
     
    “I took your birthday off, though. And the day after.”
     
    “Oh? Planning something?”
     
    “Maybe.” Actually, she was; she’d found a nice hotel on an island off the coast, just a few hours’ flight away, and had booked the night before and the night of, with a late checkout the day after. Malleus had helped her plan it; she’d needed him to check Greyson’s appointments.
     
    He started to reply but stopped when someone said his name. Winston’s daughter, Leora, sat at his left side; Megan hadn’t noticed before. The seating around the table was arranged boy-girl, with Win on Leora’s other side and his girlfriend—Sarita, right?—on his other side. The assistants, exclusively male, sat at the end closest to the kitchen doors in a ring.
     
    Gunnar Ryall from House Aquiast sat at her right. While Greyson turned to Leora, she spoke to him, making desultory conversation. No other kind could be made with Gunnar, at least not in her experience. He liked to talk about fish. A lot.
     
    Her pheasant was placed in front of her. With gratitude she turned to it and accepted another cocktail as well, instead of wine. Her stomach practically screamed at the sight of the food; she’d hardly eaten all day, and while full-blood demons could subsist for long periods of time simply on energy like what she’d exchanged with Greyson earlier, she couldn’t.
     
    Not that demons wanted to subsist purely on energy—they wouldn’t be such big eaters if they did—but they could. And they could eat enormous amounts without gaining weight, because of faster metabolisms. It was almost enough to persuade her to make the switch, but then, anorexics lost plenty of weight too, and that wasn’t exactly healthy. Giving up her humanity in exchange for extra helpings of pie didn’t seem like the greatest deal.
     
    Although she could be tempted when the food was this good. The pheasant practically melted in her mouth, dark and rich and—what was that?
     
    A shiver, almost like the one she’d felt the night before when the litobora was nearby. Tasting her.
     
    This wasn’t a demon, though. It was a human, nearby. A human where a human shouldn’t be. Megan’s responsibility. Her Yezer were guarding all of the entrances leading to this part of the building, making sure it felt so gloomy, creepy, and just plain scary that any person walking near it felt the sudden urge to be elsewhere.
     
    If there’d been a problem, it would have been communicated to Roc. Should have been communicated to Roc.
     
    So why the hell hadn’t it been? And oh, shit, how long would it be before the others sensed an intruder as well and decided she’d had something to do with it?
     

Chapter Seven
    They all knew she’d been visited by the FBI the day before. Most of them knew of her friendship with Tera. Some of them knew about her friendship with Brian, and if they knew that, they might very well also know that Brian’s girlfriend